Hello, it may be true the change was announced long time before, but me personally also did not notice and was quite surprised. If there is such a big compatibility change I would expoect major version number change (3.0) not a minor (2.4) which evokes some higher progress but not the configuration compatibility change.
I would also expect on such change if the software accepts also old config for some time and logs about deprecated config. Just to get prepared. I accept there could be reasons which did not allow authors to do it like that. Marek Odoslané pomocou bezpečného emailu Proton Mail. sobota 24. januára 2026, 17:13, John Fawcett via dovecot <[email protected]> napísal/a: > > > > On 24/01/2026 14:10, Curtis J Blank via dovecot wrote: > > > I just did a Tumbleweed upgrade. then I had to fix dovecot. No warning > > that dovecot was going to break what so ever. Below is all the things > > I had to fix. And then I could not read my email in Thunderbird > > because you changed: > > > > mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u > > to > > mail_driver = mbox > > mail_path = ~/mail > > mail_inbox_path = /var/spool/mail/%{user} > > > > and the "%u" to "%{user}" was the showstopper. > > > > What a crock of BS! I spent 3 hours determining the problem and then > > fixing dovecot because you decided to make major changes for no good > > reason. It worked just fine the way it was. You could have automated > > the changes by providing a utility that would make the changes the > > first time it started up after the upgrade. > > > Hi Curtis > > I understand the unexpected difficulty that you had to go through when > you found the new version of Dovecot upgraded in your distro upgrade. > But it has to be said that the 2.4 version has been a long time coming > and is now at 2.4.2 and you can say many things, but the incompatible > changes have been well known and publicized for a very long time now, I > think probably years rather than months. If you're using Dovecot it > would be best to keep an eye on announcements. Even if you hadn't > noticed it, this didn't just come out of the blue. > > I personally am still running the previous version on Fedora 42 and > since the upgrade to 43 includes the new 2.4 I have made my own 2.3 rpms > for Fedora 43 so that I can keep running it and then do the config > conversion calmly and in a test environment before doing it for real, > while still getting the new version of the distro. That strategy itself > is not without risk though. > > I can't blame distro packagers either. Some people are going to want the > newest version, some people are going to be reticent about breaking > their configurations and about the stabilization of the new version. You > can't reallly please everyone. > > The need for a configuration upgrade utility was probably clear to most > people, but if it hasn't been done I think it is partly due to the > difficultly of that task. it would have to cover many configuration > parameters, not just the ones that you had to change in your case. Also > some incompatible changes are not managed just through configuration. > Depending on what features you currently use there could be some > decisions to be taken too. I started to do some config migrations > already on the previous installation for some of those features that > were being deprecated in the new version just to hopefully smooth the > final migration. > > My guess is that so far no one has thought that it would be quicker to > write a configuration utility than actually do the changes relevant to > their own configuration. But that is the beauty of open source software. > If you see a gap for something and you have the skills you can > contribute something back and improve things for other people. > > John > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > dovecot mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] _______________________________________________ dovecot mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
